The Senate's 37-18 vote in favor of Godinez came despite opposition from Republicans, some with corrections facilities and workers in their districts, who maintain that employee morale is low, prisons are vastly overcrowded and department leadership is suspect.

“When you talk to these (employees), you cannot overstate how bad the morale is in our corrections institutions,” Sen. Chapin Rose, R-Champaign, said.

“There is a real fear for those who work every day keeping the most dangerous people off our streets. We have to take care of them. They're the ones whose lives are at stake day in and day out.”

Rose said that when DOC employees are away from the “prying ears and prying eyes” of their supervisors, they say they don't want Godinez in charge.

“There are many that would like to speak, but they can't for fear of their job or of retaliation,” McCann said. “This is wrong.”

“Every day I'm getting calls from people who work in corrections basically saying things are progressively getting worse in the department,” said Sen. David Luechtefeld, R-Okawville. “You can't fire the governor, but you can look at the people he appoints and see what the results are.”

Sen. Tim Bivins, R-Dixon, worried that DOC lacks a clear vision for the future, using the Thomson Correctional Facility in northern Illinois as an example.

“A couple years ago, we sold the newest prison in the system because we were told then that Thomson was built for the capacity overflow that hadn't happened,” Bivins said.

However, he said DOC officials told him at a recent hearing that Illinois' prison system is currently at 157 percent capacity.

Godinez came under fire in January after it was revealed that he'd hired a former gang member with more than 20 arrests on his record to a high-ranking post in the department.

The employee, Xadrian McCraven, was senior adviser to the chief of parole at a salary of over $111,000 a year when he was fired after a Chicago Sun-Times investigation into his past.

But Senate Democrats painted a different picture of Godinez, saying his 40-plus-year career in corrections makes him a good choice for the job.

“He has been a public servant to the max,” said Sen. Iris Martinez, D-Chicago, calling Godinez “a great human being” with a unique ability to talk with both his employees and the inmates. She also said the claims of low morale weren't accurate.

Page 2 of 2 - “On the contrary, I hear that morale is good. (Godinez) has the ability to talk to his officers, to find out what their needs are,” she said.

Chicago Democratic Sen. Kwame Raoul also spoke in support of Godinez, saying lawmakers should evaluate the decisions they make in the General Assembly instead of blaming administrators.

“Instead of pointing the finger outward, we ought to point the finger inward,” Raoul said. “We ought to look at criminal justice policies that come out of this room and the room across the rotunda. We've been going backwards.”